Ohio River - clean enough?
Water agency Orsanco ponders lowering quality standards

By Dan Klepal
Enquirer staff writer

TO COMMENT
To comment on river-quality standards - and the money needed to attain them -
contact Jason Heath at the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission, 5735
Kellogg Ave., Cincinnati, OH 45228, or e-mail

NEWPORT - The agency responsible for regulating water quality on the Ohio River
- the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission - is thinking about lowering
water quality standards meant to protect people from sewage.

Commission officials held a public meeting Tuesday to get feedback on three
alternatives that will determine, in part, how much money sewer districts all
along the river will spend to ensure raw sewage doesn't flow into it during
rainstorms. About 65 people attended.

The commission tests the river once a week, May through October. Unsafe bacteria
levels were found about half the time in 2003 and 2004.

Currently, the river is considered safe for swimming if bacteria levels would
cause 8 or fewer out of 1,000 swimmers to become ill if water came into contact
with their mouths.

Already Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky have committed to spend more than $2
billion to fix sewer overflows. But that won't be enough to solve the problem.
So the question the commission is asking: How much money should be spent?

Jason Heath, manager of monitoring and assessments for the commission, said
there are 1,400 sewer overflows in the region, accounting for about 75 percent
of the sewage that gets into the river. Other sources are wildlife, agriculture
and septic tanks.

"We want to make sure we have the right standards in place before you spend all
that money," Heath said.

The three alternatives:

Spend whatever is necessary so standards are always met.

Suspend the standards after heavy rain.

Lower the standards.

Mike Fremont, president emeritus for Rivers Unlimited, said the government has
to first consider how much a clean river is worth before it can ask how much to
spend on controlling sewage.

"If you don't know (that), you can't estimate the sensibility of a plan that
will run in the billions," Fremont said.

Tim Guilfoile, with the Northern Kentucky Water Sentinels, said the commission's
alternatives are "premature and over-simplistic."

"We're very early on in the development and implementation of (sewage) control
plans," Guilfoile said. "I do believe there will be a point of diminishing
returns, but we're pretty far away from determining where that point is."

E-mail

http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.d...506080408/1056

"Garrison Hilliard" wrote in message
...
Currently, the river is considered safe for swimming if bacteria levels
would
cause 8 or fewer out of 1,000 swimmers to become ill if water came into
contact
with their mouths.

The second instane of the word "if" in that paragraph makes me laugh.

Maybe the people of Ohio are really into scat and **** antics.